Chapter 8: African Civilization and the Spread of Islam
Answer the following questions as a short review(THIS SHOULD NOT BE YOUR ONLY STUDY)
Test yourself and see if you can do all of this without looking in the book
Fill in the blank
1. African societies organized around kinship or other forms of obligation and lacking the
concentration of political power were ____________ societies.
2. Malinke merchants, ____________, formed small partnerships to carry out trade throughout
the Mali Empire.
3. Two of the most significant “port” cities of Mali were Jenne and ____________, which law just
off the flood plain on the great bend in the Niger River.
4. The successor state to Mali was the independent kingdom of ____________, which formed
under a Berber dynasty.
5. The string of urbanized trading ports including Mogadishu, Mombassa, Malindi, Kilwa, Pate, and
Zanzibar shared the common Bantu-based and Arabic-influenced ____________ language.
6. The Arabic traveler and commentator ____________ described African societies and cultures in
his travel accounts.
7. The change from slow to rapid population growth often associated with the process of
industrialization is referred to as the ____________.
8. The ____________ culture featured a highly developed art style that flourished between 500
BCE and 200 CE
9. The ____________ city-states developed in Northern Nigeria circa 1200 CE.
10. By the late fifteenth century, the Kingdom of ____________ on the lower Congo River was
flourishing around its capital of Mbanza Kongo.
True or false
1. ______ Prior to the arrival of the Muslims, Africa was isolated from other civilizations
2. ______ Like Shang China, the indigenous religions of Africa featured ancestor worship and
diviners
3. ______ Ethiopia remained a Christian kingdom despite Muslim efforts to conquer it
4. ______ Songhay and Mali are excellent examples of the fusion of Islamic and indigenous African
culture within the context of trade and military expansion
5. ______ The Sudanic states lacked urbanization
6. ______ The common cultural element that bound the commercial cities of the East African coast
together was use of the Bantu-based language, Swahili
7. ______ Both the Kingdom of Kongo and Great Zimbabwe were examples of states based on
Bantu rather than Islamic origins
8. ______ Great Zinbabwe was the city-state founded among the Edo people in the fourteenth
century by Ewuare the Great
9. ______ Askia Muhammad’s leadership helped the Great Songhay extended its boundaries until
it dominated the Central Sudan by the mid-sixteenth century.
10. ______ Songhay broke away from Ghana in the Thirteenth century and established an empire
between Senegal and Niger.